Children's Statistics - Africa & Asia

1 in 12 children in sub-Saharan Africa dies before his or her fifth birthday (United Nations).

There are 17.6 million children in sub-Saharan Africa who suffer from acute malnutrition (World Bank).

Between 1990 and 2014, the number of stunted children under 5 worldwide declined from 255 million to 159 million. At the same time, numbers have increased in West and Central Africa from 19.9 million to 28.0 million (UNICEF).

In 2015, the risk of a child dying before reaching his or her 1st birthday was highest in Africa, 55 per 1,000 live births, which is more than five times higher than in Europe, which has a rate of 10 deaths per 1,000 live births (WHO).

Children in sub-Saharan Africa are more than 14 times more likely to die before the age of 5 than children in developed regions (UNICEF).

Pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria accounted for about 1.3 million, or about 40 percent, of under-five deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa (UNICEF).

In 2015, 95 percent of the estimated 306,000 deaths of children under 5 that were caused by malaria occurred in Africa (WHO).

Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be the region with the highest incidence of child labor at 21 percent, or 59 million children (ILO).

The Middle East and North Africa regions continue to show by far the highest youth unemployment rates , 28.2 and 30.5 percent, respectively, in 2014 (ILO).

Asia:

In 2014, 69 percent of children in the world with acute malnutrition (wasting) lived in Asia, which accounts 14.9 percent of children in the region (UNICEF).

India accounts for about 25 percent of the 2.7 million neonatal deaths that occur each year around the world (United Nations).

The Asia-Pacific region has the largest number of child laborers, 78 million, with an incidence of 9 percent (ILO).

Almost half of all child brides worldwide live in South Asia (UNICEF).